Chapter 1 - THE SECOND MIA LEFT HER HANDS
Rachel looked up just in time to see Judith open her fingers.
Baby Mia dropped from the mezzanine.
Rachel screamed and threw herself across the living-room rug.
She caught her six-month-old daughter against her chest and collapsed hard onto both knees.
Mia cried immediately.
Rachel curled around her.
“What the hell did you just do?!”
Above her, Judith Parker stood beside the railing.
Completely still.
Then the front door opened.
Owen walked in.
He saw Rachel on the floor.
Mia screaming.
Judith racing down the stairs.
His mother reached him first.
“She dropped Mia! I tried to stop her!”
Rachel stared at her.
“She threw our baby!”
Owen’s fear took over before his judgment did.
He stepped toward Rachel and slapped her.
Rachel recoiled.
Her arms never loosened around Mia.
“I SAVED her.”
Behind Owen, Judith smiled.
Tiny.
Satisfied.
Rachel saw it.
Then she looked upward.
A security camera faced the mezzanine.
“Check the camera.”
Judith’s smile disappeared.
“Owen, don’t—”
He froze.
That was the first thing that made him doubt her.
Owen slowly looked from his mother to the camera.
“Why are you afraid of what it recorded?”
Judith went pale.
Rachel held Mia tighter.
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And for the first time, Owen realized his mother might not have lied because she panicked.
She might have been ready with the lie before Mia ever fell.
